Education

John Hankiewicz

Fantagraphics Underground, 136 pages, Softback, Black & white, 8.9" × 11.3"

A father and son road trip as depicted in a surreal and experimental graphic novel.

A father and son go on a road trip to discover train station relics, a professor explains his intricate grading methods, and a pen-pal correspondence gets more suggestive and dangerous. These are all interconnected in John Hankiewicz's Education through reveries, memories, and nostalgic abstraction to tell a story that only the medium of comics could do justice. In this experimental and rewarding graphic novel, chronology and permanence are in flux while surreal illusions weave in and out of lucid states, remarkably held together by Hankiewicz's confident, clean line and crosshatchings. Much like Here by Richard McGuire, Education is a time-fracture stream of consciousness told by a veteran cartoonist in his poetic prime.